Chaotic scenes as Fermanagh school children left on the side of the road without a bus service as Ulsterbus schools’ contract is not brought forward to cover August reopening

Drivers express concerns that they have been instructed to refuse fare-paying passengers on bus routes from next Tuesday

Stormont Executive must commit to return of suspended bus services and end cuts agenda which is impacting bus provision across Fermanagh and Tyrone

Cross-community Labour councillor Donal O’Cofaigh expressed his disgust at the fact that children in Fermanagh were left without any way to get to school on their first day back.

“Children who were meant to have a first day at school today were left on the side of the road after the bus they were expecting simply didn’t show. I contacted several bus drivers to find out the story and they confirmed that services weren’t operating as the Ulsterbus schools contract only starts at the beginning of September and hadn’t been brought forward. In other areas of Northern Ireland, I understand school children were charged to go to school on operating Ulsterbus services.

“This is a totally shambolic situation – children’s education and safety have been impacted. Let’s call out what happened here – Ministers in the Stormont Executive thought that children being left without any form of transport to school, on a timetable for reopening that they themselves set, was a price worth paying in order to cut public transport budgets.”

Turning to the wider concerns heard first-hand from Ulsterbus drivers, Cllr O’Cofaigh said,

“With the onset of lockdown, many bus services were suspended. We had expected this to be a temporary move but now they are set to reopen as term-time only, designated school bus routes. Drivers have been told that they must refuse fare-paying passengers from next Tuesday as Stormont’s special dispensation to ignore social-distancing only applies to buses exclusively occupied by school children. Again, this rule seems driven by budget cuts since accepting one fare-paying adult means the entire bus has to operate at fifty percent occupancy to ensure social-distancing and that would mean the need for extra services.

“With more and more workers needing to access public transport as we transition out of lockdown, Ulsterbus and the Department for Infrastructure need to answer what public transport is going to be offered for workers needing to get to or from workplaces in rural areas like Fermanagh and Tyrone? The removal of public transport services to isolated rural communities and indeed the economy of our area will be severe. Ulsterbus bosses need to come clean on the detail of what is being proposed in the long-term.

“What’s more, details on the school bus services that will operate after September 1^st are few and far between. In one case I’ve pursued, the time of the school bus service leaving has been published by Translink but there is no information on the time of the bus back although I’ve been told there ‘should’ be one. Even if this ‘should’ becomes a ‘will’, there’s the question of what a single bus home means for children who miss a bus or who want to go to homework club or stay over for any reason. They simply won’t be able to do so.

“The fears of many bus drivers – which will be shared by rural communities across this region – is that the replacement of suspended ‘service’ runs with ‘designated school services’ will become permanent and that the old services will never return. At one stroke we will lose a huge number of our rural bus services many operating repeatedly through the day. These are vital for rural connectivity. Stormont Ministers must quickly and publicly commit to the return, as soon as it is safe to do so, of all rural bus services which operated previously”, Cllr O’Cofaigh concluded.